Abstracted Super Friends

Admittedly, I am a bit of a geek.  I have a decided fondness for sci-fi, fantasy, and comics, all those "geek culture" things.  My knowledge in this area is rather scatter shot and no where near to in depth.  This said, I had been watching some of the Justice League animated features on Netflix and they got me thinking about the old Super Friends shows I loved as a kid.  A thought began to grow about doing a series of paintings based on these iconic DC characters.  But did I really want to do straight up portraits?  Which incarnation would I pick?  I kept the idea in the back of my mind for a while, then one day while walking to the Seattle Art Museum it hit me, why not do abstracts of them.  A series of imagery based on impressions the characters left on me.  The result follows.

Aquaman

Aquaman, the whipping boy, punch line of the Justice League.  I admit he is one of my favorite heroes. I've always loved the water and ocean, and the idea to be able to live below in the depths of the sea as well as on land was an idea that really appeals to me.  I also have always loved the color orange. 

Batman

The Batman, truthfully I think it's become cliche, trendy to say he's the best.  Don't get me wrong, I love the Bat, the old TV show, the earlier movies and more so the latest series of movies.  But I tended to like the side characters more than the Bat. Truthfully more of a Nightwing fan.  With Batman, his world as I see it is wrapped in darkness.  His few bright spots get blotted out by the darkness.  On the surface as Bruce Wayne everything looks tidy and put together, but the Bat's night is a chaos devised by his rogues gallery.

The Flash

The Flash, for me, is tough to pin down.  I haven't read any of his books so I only really know him as a blur of yellow and red. 

The Green Lantern

Again, not a lot of familiarity with the green lantern corps.  In this I wanted to show how there are many lanterns.

Superman

The greatest superhero of all.  It seems he gets shoved to the background lately, because he's such a "boy scout" compared to the bat brooding in the dark.  Superman's strength is in the light.  He seeks to show us how we can be better.  I loved Superman as a kid, Christopher Reeve's Superman was great.  Then I became a broody sullen teenager and Superman's optimism clashed too severely with my cynical world view.  I've begun to grow in appreciation for Superman once again.  For all the character reasons I was originally turned off.  It takes more strength to stay in the light, not to mention help lead others to the light as well.

Wonder Woman

She's a wonder, Wonder Woman. The young princess who leaves her utopian island home to help mankind.  I loved the old TV show, ah Linda Carter.  The lasso of truth, and bracelets that could deflect anything.  She's a lot like Superman in that she chose to be optimistic about humanity, where we're going, and fight for our good. 

walk

walk 

acrylic on plywood

15x9.5

Ted

Ted... Ted is one of those long running projects that becomes a huge part of your life, to the extent of personification.  He began to take shape December 2009.  Prior to this, I had built a frame for a painting which ended out not fitting.  The frame sat around for a while before I mounted chicken wire into it.  Then is sat again until that fateful December day.  Ted's head is based from the Easter Island statues. The field surrounding his head in the framed area is an image transfer process using acrylic gel and photocopies of pictures of mass graves.  While at Ikea waiting to make a return I came up with an idea to build Ted's frame into a kind of monolith, sort of like 2001 a Space Odyssey.  The monolith is built from a 2x12 stud wall, sheathed in plywood, covered with canvas and painted.  At one point I thought of covering the monolith in tar, in fiberglass, and considered resin(big surprise there)  Another inspiration came after watching Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I sketched out ideas for images that could be a sort of Polynesian version of cave paintings. I finished the paintings September of 2012.  A final protective coat will be applied by the end of 2013, but I can finally say that Ted is essentially done.

It's bittersweet really. Ted's been both a joy and pain but that's how passion projects go.  He is 6'-4.5" tall, 4'-4"wide, and weighs a virtual ton. 

Day 1, Ted is born

Ted's chicken wire is all covered over

Ted's first paint color

Ted gets taller

Plywood Sheathing 

New colors for Ted

drawing the "cave painting figures"  with my nephew Luke 

Ted's front side

Ted's profile

Ted's backside

Bob

20.75 x 11.5
Acrylic on Plywood

A kind of random piece.  I have a bunch of odd bits of plywood lying about, and started painting on them.  This is just sort of fun in its simplicity.  It makes me smile.

I've recently begun posting art on http://fineartamerica.com/ and on a new facebook page http://www.facebook.com/artpage4DavidTaylor

For the fine art america site I typed up a new bio page, thought to repost it here.

My artistic and creative expression began showing at a young age. Drawing stick figures, making cardboard robots, mud cities for matchbox cars, building elaborate bases for my Star Wars figures, and of course Legos. Typical kid stuff. During one year of grade school I spent the majority of my time, sketching characters and story boarding an animation of the Chronicles of Narnia, which I never actually made. During my time at John F Kennedy Junior High in Eugene, Oregon, I took every possible art and shop class I could, sometimes twice. These classes were the only time in the dreaded junior high years that I felt comfortable, in who I am and in my surroundings. Then came high school. High school was only about getting into a college then a good paying career. I was encouraged to put aside my drawings in favor of science classes. When I entered the University of Oregon as a biology major my path towards med-school seemed unquestionable. When I had to drop the final term of organic chemistry I needed to find something to take up the time. Not really sure why I chose that drawing class, but it changed everything. It reignited my love for arts. By the next school year I was signed up as an art major and had an application in for the interior architecture program. I began to actually enjoy college in my new course of study. I began painting acrylics on canvas and sculpting in soapstone. After graduation I moved to Seattle, Washington and did the artist thing. I worked in the morning as a barista then came home and painted. I did this for a year before I got my first job in an architecture firm. I've continued to work for architects while also working on my art. I have participated in both group and solo shows at Seattle's Gallery 110, where I was briefly a resident artist, and have also participated in various neighborhood art walks.

an ant watching the moon explode

48 X 52

oil on cavas

An ant watching the moon explode, the title is a bit self explanatory. 

This canvas began as a drop cloth, so after stretching it there where thick smudges of black paint that showed through the gesso. These became the falling parts of the moon. The imagery of the exploding moon was inspired by the destruction of the second death star as seen from the planet moon of Endor in The Return of the Jedi. The ant is just for fun. 

3 new paintings

It's weird, I tend to work on several projects at once so every once and a while I finish a bunch of them at the same time. I recently finished two sculptures and now I have three new paintings.  So a quick note on each of these paintings.

underland

40x40

oil

June 2012

Underland was inspired by two sources. One was a painting I saw while in Victoria, BC, which was a sort of barren landscape with a high horizon line and a small VW bug driving along the horizon. I saw it at a small gallery and sadly can't remember the gallery, painting, or the artists' name. The other inspiration was CS Lewis' Silver Chair.

twinseys

16x16

acrylic

July 2012

Twinseys started while I was at the coast. It then sat for a couple months while I tried to figure where to go with it. After a bunch of sketches I finally committed to a direction and the final piece just kind of flowed out to the completion. 

dias de los muertos

16x16

acrylic

July 2012

dias de los muertos was interesting one to do.  It flowed quickly, starting really heavy on paint, then pulling paint off, adding paint, taking it off scraping and repeating until I hit the happy point.